Digital Government
Federal Bytes
ACRONYM ANARCHY. The government has been known to play fast and loose with its acronyms, creating new abbreviations at will and sometimes even reassigning new meanings to the same acronyms. Case in point: FTS. This acronym was derived from the FTS 2000 program and originally stood for Federal Tele
Digital Government
Visio wins DOD BPA
Visio Corp. said it signed a $10.7 million, twoyear blanket purchase agreement with the Navy covering the company's line of technical drawing and diagramming software designed to help develop and manage information systems. The new Visio contract will be open to all military services and Defense D
Digital Government
Mark Boyer, Alaska CIO, Joins Cisco
Mark Boyer, who has been commissioner of Alaska's Department of Administration, has joined Cisco Systems Inc. as publicsector senior manager. In this new role he joins Michele Grisham, who heads the publicsector consulting team within Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group.
Digital Government
DynCorp to offer feds satellite access to Net
Government customers are clamoring for bandwidth just the same as nearly every commercial organization, and DynCorp hopes its new alliance with a satellite Internet service provider will result in solutions that meet federal customers' needs. DynCorp, a Reston, Va.based information technology serv
Digital Government
GAO tepid on feds' Y2K progress
The General Accounting Office last week gave lukewarm praise to the departments of Education and Labor for fixing their Year 2000 computer problems. Both departments have made substantial improvements since last year, said Joel Willemssen, GAO's director for civilian agencies information systems, t
Digital Government
Acrobat 4.0 most powerful yet
Go to any agency World Wide Web site to download a document file and most likely you'll find it in one of three formats: ASCII, Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format. The problem with ASCII files, of course, is that they cannot offer much in the way of formatting. Microsoft Word
Digital Government
OPM shouldn't delegate screening
The Office of Personnel Management recently issued proposed rules that would delegate to agencies the responsibility of determining whether individuals are suitable for federal employment (Federal Register, Jan. 28, 1999, Vol. 64, No. 18, Pages 4,336 to 4,342). Such determinations are intended to w
Digital Government
GSA eyes share in savings for popular IT contracts
The General Services Administration is talking with NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Transportation Department about incorporating incentivebased contracting options into several of the government's largest programs for information technology products and services. GSA is working wi
Digital Government
Union: DOD should prove outsourcing benefits
A government union today asked Congress to impose a moratorium on further contracting out by the Defense Department because thousands of government employees, including information technology professionals, may lose their jobs.
Digital Government
U.S. DOT Opens FY 2000 Anti-Sprawl Funding Program
The U.S. Transportation Department this week opened its fiscal 2000 funding rounds for the Transportation and Community and System Preservation Program to help local governments fight urban sprawl.
Digital Government
Market to Fight Red-Light-Running Heats Up
Lockheed Martin IMS yesterday announced a $28 million deal with Washington, D.C., to begin installing cameras and imaging systems at 40 city intersections in the nation's capital to deter motorists from charging through red lights.
Digital Government
Customs wants funds for import system
The Clinton administration's proposal to fund a new computer system for the Customs Service through a user fee met stiff opposition yesterday in the Senate, but members agreed that the system still must be funded.
Digital Government
Russia backs out of high-tech NATO exercise
To protest NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, Russia this week pulled out of a major U.S.led NATO computer and communications exercise that promises to help allies share information on the battlefield.
Digital Government
Feds Kick Off Rural Distance-Learning/Telemedicine Program
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has opened a funding program to promote distancelearning and telemedicine initiatives in rural America.
Digital Government
Nation's Governors Brainstorm on Education Tech Strategies
The National Governors Association next week will hold the first of two working sessions to brief governors on how to shape statewide visions for education technology and bolster state education programs with enabling technology.
Digital Government
Pentagon confirms 'nuisance' cyberattacks
The Pentagon identified what it called nuisancelevel attacks against its World Wide Web sites that resemble the attacks by Chinese hackers against sites operated by the departments of Energy and Interior earlier this week.
Digital Government
California Harnesses the Internet to Fight Bacterial Outbreaks
To better flag information about deadly bacteria outbreaks, California's Department of Health Services recently went live with a new Internetbased system that will speed delivery of information on outbreaks, including salmonella, which involves raw or undercooked poultry.
Digital Government
Educational Tech Will Be Hot in 2000
State and local governments are sinking funds into education technology, making ed tech one of the hottest markets to watch in 2000, according to figures released Tuesday by Federal Sources Inc., a McLean, Va.based market research firm.
Digital Government
Virginia Holds IT Summit
Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore's Commission on Information Technology meets today to come up with recommendations on how the six regions of the state can work more closely to leverage information technology as an engine to stimulate and support economic growth.
Digital Government